Forty
years after the UpStairs
Lounge fire killed 32 people at a French Quarter gay bar -- in the process
shining a light on the until-then largely underground gay community in New
Orleans -- the Chalmette Movies
is doing its part to make sure no one forgets the tragedy. "The UpStairs Lounge
Fire," director Royd Anderson's documentary short about the historic blaze, is
scheduled to screen twice for free at the local movie theater in coming weeks.

Honoring the UpStairs Lounge fire victimsThirty-two lives were lost when an arsonist set fire to the UpStairs Lounge June 24, 1973. Because the fire began in the stairwell leading to the second floor bar, the main escape route was cut off. A bartender led 20 patrons to safety out a back exit, but that door then was shut off and bars on the windows left many other patrons trapped.
It is the deadliest fire in New Orleans' long history, and it has never been solved.
The sad truth is that there didn't seem to be great interest in solving the case 40 years ago because the UpStairs Lounge was a gay bar. A police officer at the time dismissed the French Quarter lounge as a place where "thieves" and "queers" hung out.
In reality, the crowd at the UpStairs Lounge that Sunday evening was enjoying cheap beer -- $2 for all you could drink from 5-7 p.m. -- and singing around the piano, according to news reports. The bar was a place they could be themselves at a time when many people, including the police, were hostile toward them.
Thankfully, attitudes have changed dramatically in the decades since the fire.
(--From a June 22 editorial)

"It's an important part
of gay history, as well as that of New Orleans," theater owner Wendeslaus
Schulz said. "We're donating the screening venue to let as many people as
possible see this film."

Anderson's 27-minute film
will screen at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 7; and at 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 11.
A discussion will follow each screening.

On June 24, 1973, someone
set fire to the wooden stairs leading to the entrance of the second-floor
nightclub at 141 Chartres St. Although some 20 people managed to escape through
a back exit leading to the roof of the building, 32 others perished inside,
many of them hindered by bars covering the windows. No one was ever prosecuted
for the crime, although it is widely suspected that a disgruntled patron of the
bar set the fire after being thrown out earlier in the evening for fighting.

The
40th anniversary of the fire was earlier this month. Among other
local observances, a
jazz funeral procession made its way through the French Quarter -- led by a
brass band and including a horse-drawn carriage carrying 32 roses, to
commemorate the 32 victims -- to remember those who died in the fire.